• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre

Improving brain health: the future in mind

MENUMENU
  • Our People
  • About
    • About
    • Contact
    • Core facilities
    • Management and partners
    • Work with us
  • Clinical Research Facility
    • Who we are
    • What we do
    • Our staff
    • Our facilities
    • Our collaborators
    • List of open research studies
    • Get involved
    • CRF publications
    • Where to find us
  • Research Themes
    • Overview of Research Themes
    • Adult Mental Health
    • Older Adults and Dementia
    • Precision Psychological Therapies
    • Clinical Research Infrastructure and Experimental Medicine
    • Informatics and Digital Health
    • Neuroimaging and Cognitive Neuroscience
    • Patient and Public Involvement
    • Training theme
    • Theme Leads
  • Our Work
    • Brain Health Centre
    • Oxford Precision Psychiatry Lab (OxPPL)
    • Oxford Dementia and Ageing Research (OxDARE)
    • Treatment Resistant Depression Clinic
    • Experimental Medicine and Industry Partnership (EMIP)
  • COVID-19 Research
    • Overview
    • News
    • COVID-19 & clinical management of mental health issues
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Blog
    • Training & Events
    • Psychiatry department seminars
  • Training Hub
  • Patients & Public
    • About Patient and Public Involvement
    • Shape our research
    • Take part in our research
    • Resources for researchers
    • Resources for the public
    • Patient and Public Involvement Strategy
    • Young people’s involvement
You are here: Home / Research Themes / Clinical Research Infrastructure and Experimental Medicine

Clinical Research Infrastructure and Experimental Medicine


Cross-cutting theme lead: Catherine Harmer
Deputy theme lead: 
Susannah Murphy

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit

► About the theme

The mechanisms underlying successful treatment in psychiatry are relatively unknown and unintegrated. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry has lost confidence in developing novel treatments for mental health disorders, motivated by the low rates of success across drug development.

Experimental medicine models aim to address this by uncovering key underlying processes, which are targeted by established treatments. It is increasingly recognised by the pharmaceutical industry that the introduction of experimental medicine models can:

  • overcome the limitations of preclinical screening models
  • de-risk drug development
  • increase the success of identifying successful treatments in subsequent randomised control trials (RCT)

At Oxford we have established expertise and infrastructure in this area. We can add strength and depth to our core Oxford Health BRC Research Themes by developing an experimental structure for testing of new treatments for mental disorders. Experimental medicine has the potential to bring great benefit to patients and the public through increased availability of diverse treatments.

► What are our aims?

  • Enable early identification and testing of new treatments for mental and cognitive disorders
  • Enhance our experimental medicine capability and capacity
  • Harmonise activities in experimental medicine across core themes
  • Transform the methodology and structure for informed decision making about novel treatment development and RCT design
  • Provide a method for predicting and refining treatment for individuals with mood and anxiety disorders
  • Roll out our experimental medicine models to the pharmaceutical industry and the wider research community
  • Formulate precision models for combined pharmacological and psychological treatments

► How are we achieving this?

  • Using our framework to understand mechanisms of treatments across core themes
  • Focusing on the early effects of therapeutic interventions, often seen before changes in symptoms
  • Examining the influence of mood stabilising medication, psychological interventions, and novel compounds for the treatment of bipolar disorder
  • Evaluating the ability of our measures to predict therapeutic benefit in mood and anxiety disorders from baseline and early treatment change assessments
  • Testing the potential for a wide range of factors to predict patient benefit using mathematical and computational models
  • Reducing the barriers between psychological and pharmacological treatments using an integrative framework
  • Explore the way in which treatments work in different intervention approaches.
  • Building a robust and informative model which offers predictions for whether psychological, drug or a combination treatment is most appropriate
  • Developing bespoke combination treatments
  • Conducting early phase testing of combinatorial therapy
  • Working together with industry to test new compounds using existing agreements and research structure.

Find a list of recent publications from the theme here.

For researchers interested in working within the Clinical Research Infrastructure and Experimental Medicine theme, please contact Liliana.Capitao@psych.ox.ac.uk.

Primary Sidebar

Research Themes

  • Overview of Research Themes
  • Adult Mental Health
  • Older Adults and Dementia
  • Precision Psychological Therapies
  • Clinical Research Infrastructure and Experimental Medicine
  • Informatics and Digital Health
  • Neuroimaging and Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Patient and Public Involvement (PPI)
  • Training theme

Footer

Follow us

  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Improving brain health: the future in mind

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) is a partnership between Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Oxford. We are part of the Oxford Academic Health Science Centre.

Oxford Academic Health Science Centre
  • Sitemap
  • Accessibility
  • Disclaimer
  • Cookies
  • Contact

© 2022 NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre · Log in

Cookies

This site uses cookies: See our privacy policy